Mark Richards Email & Phone Number

Cambridge, Ma, Us

Columbus, Ohio, Us

Demonstrate and refine project management skills while embedded across multiple offices by effectively prioritizing and managing data analytics requests, ensuring timely and accurate delivery of insights and reports to stakeholders.Participate in a statewide taskforce of high level stakeholders focused on reducing student absences. Leverage strong analytical skills to collect, analyze, and interpret data related to student school attendance, identifying trends and patterns to provide valuable insights for decision-making and intervention improvement.Collaborate closely with stakeholders across various departments and offices to gather requirements, understand data needs, and design data collection methodologies to support robust analytics and reporting.Support the implementation and evaluation of school nutrition pilot programs, collecting and analyzing data to assess program effectiveness and impact, presenting findings and reports to internal stakeholders as well as federal administrators.Provide technical expertise and support to colleagues and staff members across departments and offices, assisting with data analysis, report generation, and troubleshooting to ensure smooth operations and effective utilization of data analytics tools and systems.

Columbus, Ohio, Us

Acted as the product owner for the state report card webapp in an agile scrum team that utilized the Azure DevOps systemDeveloped and delivered training materials to explain the state, district, and building-level report card accountability system to technical and non-technical stakeholdersCreated and maintained an annual report grouping districts based on demographic and financial characteristics, integrating data from multiple sources including the Ohio Department of Education, the United States Census Bureau, and the Ohio Department of TaxationConducted statewide and individual district analysis to create equity reports for Career-Technical education Districts as part of the Ohio Perkins V planConducted research and analysis to generate annual Reading Action Plan reports (RAPs) which identified schools entering and exiting RAPs and provided administrators with student performance overviewsCollaborated with program offices and other stakeholders to review, update, and maintain technical documentation detailing the data, calculations, and Ohio revised and administrative codes used to generate district and building-level report card components and measuresDeveloped interactive simulations and dashboards to support data-driven decision making during the redesign of the state report card as well as for updates to the states Every student Succeeds Act (ESSA) planManaged and served as the primary point of contact for all 600+ public districts and 3000+ school buildings in the Ohio Educational Directory System (OEDS)Created and maintained documentation to train and guide district administrators in accurate and timely updates of OEDS listingsParticipated in the Federal audit of the states accountability system by reviewing findings and working with internal stakeholders to develop plans and timelines for meeting compliance

Columbus, Ohio, Us

Developed, implemented, and improved frameworks and standard operating procedures to ensure compliance with the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Procurement Review (PR) Process for sponsors receiving federal funds for nutrition programs across the state of Ohio.Created user-friendly training materials, hosted workshops and webinars, and provided technical assistance to Food Service Directors, Treasurers, and Superintendents to teach them about the Procurement Review process and regulations from 2 CFR 200.318-.326.Designed and built tracking logs to monitor the progress of 830 concurrent Procurement Reviews, accessible by multiple reviewers simultaneously. Developed a management dashboard to provide summary statistics and track overall progress.Developed and maintained a crosswalk of identifiers for US Department of Education National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) and Ohio Department of Education Internal Retrieval Numbers (IRNs) to ensure accurate data collection and reporting.Created geospatial maps using geographic information system (GIS) software to show program sites in Ohio for the National School Lunch Program, Child and Adult Food Care Program, and Summer Food Service Program. Also created maps to show boundaries for State Support Team regions, Education Program Specialist assigned regions, USDA Area eligible regions, and food warehouse distribution regions.Developed and maintained annual reports detailing participation in school breakfast initiatives and participation in school lunch programs across the state.Drafted responses to findings in federal program management evaluations and recommended strategies to address areas of improvement.Reviewed quality, completeness, and accuracy of vendor work for reimbursement on work done for procurement reviews. Provided feedback and recommendations to vendors to improve the quality of their work.

Intially a side project used to learn about geospatial analysis. It was spun out to its own page to make the results widely available. The analysis is rerun with the annual release of data from the USDA.A webpage designed to display results of a nationwide analysis of program eligibility for the United States Department of Agricultures (USDA) Summer Food Service Program (SFSP). The analysis looks at all areas not deemed eligible by the USDA and performs adjacent neighbor weighting to see if the areas can be converted into eligible areas based on a set of USDA published business rules. The webpage surfaces these results by allowing users to enter any address in the United States or if on a mobile device use their GPS location to check if an area can host a summer feeding site. For areas that are made eligible by calculation the identification numbers and calculations used are displayed so that they can be submitted to the users respective state agency that oversees the program. This information will be needed in order for the agencies to approve operations.The technical details are:A static webpage hosted on Amazon Web Services in an S3 bucket. A CloudFront content network distribution used to allow for HTTPS and an AWS managed certificate. JavaScript on the page to make a call to an API gateway that is attached to several server less Lambda functions written in Python. The Lambda functions take the user input and geocode the address by making another API call. The results of that API call are then used to query a DynamoDB that holds the results of the analysis. The page JavaScript then updates the page contents to display the returned analysis results.

Cloud project portfolio.Deploying Mediawiki on Azure, AWS, and GCP using stateless container images and integrating with Azure File Shares, AWS Elastic File Shares (EFS), Google storage buckets, and Managed MySql relational databases.Using custom text data to create retrieval augmented (RAG) chatbots that only responds with information from your data source, but uses ChatGPT and Azure AI services to understand and format responses to questions asked.Use Artificial Intelligence container images provided by Microsoft along with AI Service telemetry endpoints to run AI locally for use with sensitive data.Static webpages using HTML, CSS, and Javascript hosted in AWS Simple Storage Service (S3) with forwarding from a custom domain on Google Domains and later AWS Route53.Making results of a national policy analysis available through a static webpage operating out of an AWS S3 bucket with a CloudFront CDN providing SSL to allow users to submit browser locations. Embedded JavaScript sends user requests to an API gateway that splits requests based on input type and makes a secondary call to an external API then matches results to a query against a DynamoDB table before displaying combined results to users.Walkthrough on how to transfer domains from Google Domains into AWS Route53 to avoid automatic transfer to SquareSpace at Google Domains end of life.Deploying interactive containerized Shiny dashboards on Google Cloud Platform (GCP) to make analysis performed in R available without the need for users to install software or dependent libraries.Provisioning virtual machines and attached graphics processing units (GPUs) in Google cloud to act as a backend for Google Colab python notebooks. As well as attaching google storage buckets to instances to act as permanent storage for analysis input/output.

Facilitate drop-in tutoring sessions for students in economics courses, providing guidance and assistance as needed.Offer one-on-one tutoring sessions to students who require more personalized assistance, tailoring sessions to their specific needs and learning styles.Help students develop a solid understanding of foundational economic principles, including supply and demand, price elasticity, and marginal analysis.Explain complex economic concepts in a way that is accessible and easy to understand, using examples and real-world applications to help students see the relevance of what they are learning.Work with students to build critical thinking and problem-solving skills, assisting them in applying economic theories to real-world scenarios.Help students develop effective study strategies and time-management techniques, offering guidance on how to effectively balance coursework with other academic and personal responsibilities.Collaborate with other tutors and academic support staff to develop resources and tools that support student success in economics courses.Attend training sessions and professional development workshops to stay up-to-date on best practices in tutoring and academic support.Communicate regularly with professors and academic advisors to ensure that tutoring sessions align with course objectives and meet student needs.

Operate book, negative, and flatbed scanners to digitize the collection of the archive.Ensure the proper handling of materials during the digitization process, such as books, documents, and photographs.Ensure high quality and accurate digital captures using imaging software and hardware.Develop and maintain procedures for the digitization process to ensure consistency and efficiency.Create and maintain metadata for digitized materials to facilitate discovery and access to the collection.Conduct quality control checks to ensure all digitized materials meet established standards for image quality and metadata.Work with archivists and subject matter experts to identify and prioritize materials for digitization.Participate in the development of digital preservation policies and procedures for the archive.Collaborate with staff to maintain the archive's digital assets and ensure their long-term preservation.

Reviewed and posted daily transaction journals, including cash and credit card transactions averaging approximately $1.8 million dollars annually.Ensured proper transmission of credit cards for daily payment processing and maintained accurate financial records.Developed and maintained an operations checklist for the nightly audit to ensure operational standards were met.Designed, maintained, and distributed template forms for logging daily business such as cash drawer logs, breakfast setups, holiday service charts, and more.Trained new and fellow employees on company policy, procedures, and Property Management Systems, as well as the specific requirements of the nightly audit.Demonstrated leadership and creative problem-solving skills to resolve guest complaints and concerns in a professional and courteous manner.Employed multi-tasking and organization skills to manage a multi-line phone system while conducting face-to-face business with guests, responding to inquiries, and coordinating with other departments.Performed nightly audit of transactions and accounting records, including reconciliation of charges and cash receipts.Used bookkeeping software and financial analysis tools to generate reports, monitor financial performance, and identify areas for improvement.Worked with the management team to implement customer service training programs and initiatives aimed at improving guests’ experience.Assisted with other departments as needed to ensure smooth operations and guest services.

Bachelor Of Science In Business Administration (Bsba), Economics

Accounting